Memorial Health Services, the Long Beach-based nonprofit hospital operator, just got bigger in Orange County.
Last week, Memorial finalized its buy of San Clemente Hospital and Medical Center. The price wasn’t disclosed.
San Clemente had sought a buyer for some time. Hospital officials had cited the challenges of operating on their own when it came to negotiating contracts with health insurers.
San Clemente joins Memorial’s other hospitals here, Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, Anaheim Memorial Medical Center and Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley.
Memorial plans to put San Clemente Hospital under Saddleback. Steve Geidt, Saddleback’s chief executive, said he doesn’t expect major changes. Existing services could be enhanced and others could be added depending on need.
Pat Wolfram, who had been San Clemente’s chief executive since after Nashville-based NetCare Health Systems Inc. bought it in 1998, accepted the chief executive’s job at La Palma Intercommunity Hospital.
San Clemente Hospital, which has 73 beds, is set to operate under Saddleback’s license as an acute care facility with a 24-hour emergency room. Saddleback has 252 licensed beds.
The hospitals have worked together. Two years ago, they opened a medical building in San Clemente’s Talega masterplanned community. Many of San Clemente Hospital’s doctors already were on Saddleback’s staff.
San Clemente Hospital made news in early 2001 when 12 area doctors pooled their money, got a lender and bought the hospital from NetCare, which had filed for bankruptcy protection. The deal made San Clemente Hospital OC’s only doctor-owned hospital.
In an earlier interview, Dr. Ronald McGee, president of San Clemente Medical Center LLC, said the doctors decided to buy the hospital in order to keep medical services in the city that borders northern San Diego County.
“Only 12 of us had the chutzpah to take the chance” to buy San Clemente Hospital, said McGee, a family practitioner who has practiced medicine in the area for some 26 years.
McGee and the other investors thrashed out the idea to buy the hospital on the boat of Dr. Gus Gialamas, an orthopedic surgeon.
“We called it the San Clemente Tea Party,” McGee said.
Laser Maker Gets Financing
VisiJet Inc., an Irvine maker of eye surgery devices, recently closed $4.9 million worth of financing.
The company said it was planning to use the money to support sales and marketing of its EpiLift system. VisiJet touts EpiLift as a “new, safer refractive surgery technique” that enables eye surgeons to perform laser surgery with fewer postoperative complications than existing methods.
EpiLift received Food and Drug Administration approval in September. Gebauer Medizintechnik GMBH, a German company, makes the device.
“With this round of financing, the company will have the ability to fund a sales and marketing program to support” EpiLift, said Randy Bailey, VisiJet’s chief executive.
VisiJet, which trades on the low-profile Bulletin Board stock exchange, makes devices that use a high-pressure micro beam of water to cut away eye tissue. The company’s first product, Hydrokeratome, uses water to cut the cornea in vision correction surgery and has regulatory approval.
Regulators Clear PacifiCare Buy
PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. of Cypress received early antitrust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission for its proposed acquisition of the group health insurance business of Newport Beach-based Pacific Life Insurance Co.
PacifiCare agreed to buy Pacific Life’s health insurance business in November. The parties didn’t disclose financial specifics, but PacifiCare said it would acquire up to 140,000 members from Pacific Life in the deal.
At the time the deal was announced, PacifiCare Chief Executive Howard Phanstiel called it a logical follow-up to its $500 million buy of Green Bay, Wis.-based American Medical Security Group, which gave the managed healthcare service company more of a foothold in the preferred provider organization market.
Bits and Pieces:
Paul McCormick, chief executive of Endologix Inc., Irvine, and Dr. Rodney White of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, are giving “Technology Update,Developments in Endovascular Devices & Procedures” at the March 9 meeting of the Life Science Industry Council in Irvine. Information: (949) 475-0845 Edwards Lifesciences Corp., Irvine, previewed its FloTrac sensor, a hemodynamic monitor for cardiovascular performance, last month at the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s 34th congress in Phoenix. Edwards said it expects to make FloTrac widely available in the U.S. and Europe later this year, pending regulatory approvals I-Flow Corp., Lake Forest, addressed institutional investors at the Piper Jaffray healthcare conference last week in New York. Separately, Dr. Randall Wolf, a University of Cincinnati Medical Center surgeon, demonstrated I-Flow’s On-Q pain relief system during a telesurgery broadcast at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons’ annual meeting in Tampa.
